By Chris Livemore I am going to start this blog by letting you know that there were no pumpkins in medieval Britain. Not a single one. Pumpkins came from the Americas and only reached Europe after the medieval period in the 16th century. They were first mentioned by Elizabethan herbalist John Gerard in 1597, so we know pumpkins, or 'pompions' as they were known back then, were grown in Tudor gardens, but missed the Middle Ages. So whatever people were doing at the end of Octo

Trows are creatures from the folklore of Orkney and Shetland, the islands at the very top of Scotland, so far north they are closer to Norway than to London. The word Trow is connected to the Scandinavian heritage of the Northern Isles. It comes through Norn, the old Scandinavian language once spoken in Orkney and Shetland, and is closely related to the word troll.

A few nights ago my daughter declared loudly that she is obsessed with Robin Hood because he helps people, can shoot arrows and has lots of friends. She also mentioned that he was a fox, all very accurate points if we are basing all of our Robin Hood knowledge entirely on the 1970s Disney film, but Robin Hood wasn't really like that. This one might just surprise you! Spoiler Alert - if my daughter knew that I wrote a medieval history blog, could navigate the internet to fin